Elkhorn Creek is an 18.3-mile-long (29.5 km) stream running through several counties in central Kentucky in the United States. It derives its name from the shape, as seen on a map, of its main stem with its two primary forks.
North Elkhorn Creek starts just east of Lexington and flows a total of 75.4 miles (121.3 km) through Fayette and Scott counties, and into Franklin County, where it meets the South Elkhorn at the Forks of the Elkhorn east of Frankfort. South Elkhorn Creek begins in Fayette County, and flows a total of 52.8 miles (85.0 km) through Woodford, Scott and Franklin counties to reach the Forks of the Elkhorn. South Elkhorn Creek defines the boundary between Scott and Woodford counties. Beyond the Forks of the Elkhorn, the confluent waters flow north and empty into the Kentucky River north of Frankfort.
Species of fish in the Elkhorn include rock bass, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, carp, crappie, and bluegill.
Elkhorn Creek is mentioned in the poem "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman:
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live, A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianan or Georgian...
Famous quotes containing the word creek:
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)